Advice On Mid-life Crisis...Please!

[woopsidaisy]

Hi. Friend of mine is having a complete mid-life crisis.She is fourty.Married to fab guy,has young kids.
She has fallen BIG TIME for guy nearly twenty years younger.He fancies her too. Meeting up with her with other friend soon.Friend and I want to help her,she spills it all out to us.Asks our advice.What should we be telling her?!
I think she needs to tell her DH-it is an emotional affair as opposed to physical.Get counselling/Relate.Cut young guy out of her life and start making concrete decisions about what she wants out of life.Friend thinks she needs trial separation to think things through.
Her DH senses something is up.She can't continue like she is.Someone is going to find out/spill the beans.I want to help her but don't know how.She displays all the signs you usually see from men in this situation,says she never felt this way about someone before.
Help!

[Malificence]

How can you help her?
You can tell her to grow the fuck up and stop acting like a pathetic teenager with a crush for one.

[woopsidaisy]

I know. Part of me -a large part of me-wants to tell her that.But she has always been such a high achieving "perfect" person. Together,organised,caring...
I was wondering whether anyone had experience of a mid-life crisis themselves.How did they get over it? What helped? She is acting like a teenager.Remember when you were a teenager,you felt no-one understood,you were different? It is like that for her! She has never "felt this way before" about someone .
I do actually think I should go in hard line?But maybe her marriage isover,still would hit the roof if she shacked up with this guy....
Gah! Want to shake some sense into her! Ok-maybe just needed to vent.Will go hardline.

[MorganMindy]

I'm not sure if anything you say will get through to her to be honest. If she's totally caught up in the excitement of this 'affair' she's going to justify it to herself and go ahead whatever.
All you can do is be honest with her, tell her the fallout from this will be huge, her 'D'H, kids, family and friends will all be hurt and impacted by her actions.
Was she unhappy in her marriage before the OM came on the scene?

[AnyFuckerForAMincePie]

I have a friend who does some really stupid things.

She listens to me, tells me I give fantastic advice and then ignores it all.

< sigh >

Tell her what you like, she won't listen. You may just have to make it clear you will still be there to pick up the pieces when it goes tits-up (it will)

[woopsidaisy]

No unhappiness in marriage. She admits DH is amazing, but that the "spark is gone". Hands on with kids, hardworker, adores her. We asked her how she would feel if he moved on and met someone else,she said she would be OK with that. But I think she is making a huge mistake and is going to regret this big time.
It is like watching a car crash in slow motion,and not being able to stop it .

[WhenwillIfeelnormal]

You could point out that to this bloke, she is the archetypal "safe" married woman who will deliver sex and make no demands, but like AF says, she is probably too far gone in some romantic true love fantasy, that she will hotly deny what we all suspect are his intentions.

If you know her H too, it is actually very unfair to burden you with this secret. I recently wrote about how I helped a friend who was an OW, but it started with me stating clearly that although I loved her dearly, I hated what she was doing. If she wanted to talk to me about it, I would help her, but that I would be very challenging with her and couldn't support this affair.

She did talk to me about it and finally saw sense, but had she not, I would have very firmly told her that I didn't want to hear about the affair, but would be around to support her as usual if it all ended in tears.

I wonder why she feels entitled to have an affair and deceive her H and DCs?

[AnyFuckerForAMincePie]

oh yes, I am very blunt with my friend and pul absolutely no punches

makes no difference

se doesn't learn from mistakes either, some people don't

[AnyFuckerForAMincePie]

she

[Minminlight]

Reading this thread made me quite sad - my DH hit MLC without any warning - I found text messaging from OW. It has now been months, our once happy marriage is over and really, once they are entrenched in these fantasy emotional affairs there is little anyone can do. My DH refused to stop - despite the destruction it caused and one of his friends telling him to stop. He chose emotional affair over me and his sons. Unfortunately I think many people (professional counsellors included) don't realise that these affairs are perhaps more damaging than the physical and harder to break. Her DH will eventually find out and I would predict the end of her marriage.

Even as her most blunt friend she will continue regardless.

[AnyFuckerForAMincePie]

really sorry about that, Minmin

[woopsidaisy]

Thanks for all the advice and experience.
And sorry for raking things up Minmin.At least I can say I tried...

[fizzfiend]

I can't believe that nobody has said this...but it is none of your business. She's a 40 year old woman FGS and who are you to advise her....and did she even ask for advice? Keep out of it if I were you...everyone hates judgemental people who try to stick their oars in.

On the other hand, if she really is a good friend, just be there when she wants to talk, listen, do not ever judge...you can maybe tell her what you would do but if she is going to mess up her life, you are not going to stop her.

If she doesn't care if her DH leaves, she obviously has issues with him that you are unaware of...even though he is a "fab guy". Maybe he is a crap guy behind closed doors?

Some of the things you say make you sound a teensy bit jealous...like you can't wait for it to end with her lover. So she's acting "like a man"....what a crime!

[woopsidaisy]

Sorry fizzfiend. She has repeatedly asked me for advice. And she is trying to sort it out.I wish I didn't know about it to be honest...
I hope I haven't judged her.In fact because I love her I feel I may be a little too soft. If someone told me this story about a random person I would think what a twat! But I know she isn't a twat,well not usually.
I feel she thinks she wouldn't care if marriage ended. Obviously Nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors,but she admits herself her DH is blameless.
One thing I do agree with you on though is that I can't wait for her to end it with her lover...you're right I can't. Not because I'm jealous-another friend of fourty is single and regularly goes out with guys of this age,I say grap 'em while you can! But because I feel she is prolonging the pain for herself. Like ripping a plaster off very slowly.
Thanks for the advice though.

[WhenwillIfeelnormal]

Look, if she keeps asking you for advice, then she is making it your business, isn't she? It's not as if you've waded in with unsolicited advice. I often wonder about the quality of some of the friendships posters on here have, because we all need friends who will tell us how they see our behaviour and actions, especially if it is harming ourselves and others. As long as we are sure that our friends love us and that their advice is from a good place, good friendships withstand honesty.

If you are determined to help her, then you might want to try my approach of "If you really want my advice, then I'm happy to give it, but I will be very challenging and you might not want to hear it." This is what I said to my friend as described downthread and it was therefore her choice to come and talk to me. We have been friends for over 30 years, so she knew I had her best interests at heart, loved her and would go on loving her.

It might help though if you challenge some of your own thinking. She's not acting like a man, because women are just as capable of having an affair despite a good marriage. She is at least being honest that there aren't any problems in her marriage and she's not vilifying her husband. She's also being honest when she says that the only problem is that the "spark" has reduced over the years. It is an absolute myth that women's marriages need to be bad, for them to have an affair. I suspect what's happened here is a massive over-reaction to a crush.

However, where I think your friend might be falling into a gender trap is in how she describes her feelings. I have often noticed that when some women have affairs, they cannot acknowledge that all they are after is some no-strings sex, so they frame their feelings as "love" when what they are feeling is "lust". Because they convince themselves that they are in love, this leads to some very poor decision-making.

A pragmatic, wiser friend can be a great help here in analysing her true feelings for this man. It goes without saying too, that if the only problem in her marriage is that it lacks spark, having an affair will cause what spark there is, to be extinguished completely.

She is evidently too far gone here if she is saying that if her H left, she wouldn't mind. The truth, I suspect, would be rather different. It leads me to wonder whether she is therefore being entirely truthful with you and that she has had sex with the OM.

One of the best ways of helping her will be to get her to take responsibility and project the future. People immersed in the insanity of an affair are notoriously poor at working out the true consequences. Some of the worst for her are that she might lose the right to be the resident parent and at the very least, she will be looking at shared parenting with her H, who doesn't deserve to lose living with his children.

Statistically at least, it is highly unlikely that the new relationship with a 20 year old is going to withstand a bitter divorce, hurt children and the lure of women his own age.

The price she is likely to pay for what undoubtedly was an over-reaction to a perfectly normal crush, could be enormous.

Now I well understand that as her friend, you are horrified that this could become her fate and so since she has involved you against your will, the most valuable thing you can do for her is to be the pragmatic, wise ally. It would be a sign of a shallow friendship if you sat on the sidelines saying nothing, while this car crash happened.

Now, bear in mind that she will have rather shallower people in her life who might collude with her and urge her to find grievances in her marriage that simply don't exist, so it would be fair to warn her of this too. This is partly because some women simply cannot get their head around a woman having an affair for reasons other than marital unhappiness. What happens then is that the denial and romantic idealism sets in even firmer and terrible decisions are made, all in the name of "love".

[woopsidaisy]

Thanks so much WWIFN! Some really good advice there. I have been feeling many of those things...just wasn't sure whether I should say them. But maybe she needs to hear them.
Thanks everyone. Will see her over weekend.

[cindystill]

She will have a shock when she goes out with this 20 year old.

People will ask if he is her son. That is the truth, unfortunately.

[suburbophobe]

She doesn't realise what a good thing she's got already, how sad, maybe he's just in it for the thrill of the chase.